Early on a freezing Sunday morning at Wary Fox Farm, Sloane Alexander's grooming session with her horse Kashmir is shattered when her two Shelties, Maxxwell and Harley, detect the overwhelming scent of blood, decay, and stinging chemicals. Following the dogs' frantic alerts, Sloane runs down the eerily silent barn aisle to find the door to Domino's stall slid partway open. Inside the shadows, she discovers the massive black gelding collapsed in the churned wood shavings, violently thrashing and drooling pink-tinged foam in a drug-induced haze.

Trapped beneath the crushing, 1,200-pound weight of the dying horse is the horse's owner, Portia von Stubben-Davis. Sloane falls to her knees and pushes aside the horse's sweaty black mane, revealing Portia's lifeless, pale face staring blindly at the ceiling. Instantly smothering her own panic, Sloane's cold, logical instincts as a crisis manager take over, launching a desperate rescue attempt and a 911 call that will pull her directly into the crosshairs of a homicide investigation.